Green Arrow v3 1-60

Like everyone else with a comic blog, I grew up reading the satellite-era JLA, which is where I derived pretty much everything I know about Green Arrow. I'm pretty sure my dad had at least a couple of the Adams/O'Neil Lantern/Arrow comics lying around, but, as a kid, I tended to stay away from anything too gritty. Even by the time Longbow Hunters came around, even though I was 12, I didn't really feel a need to read an extra-grim Green Arrow story (which, having now read Longbow Hunters, was probably a good idea) So, pretty much my only exposure to Green Arrow as a kid was as the liberal argumentative hothead from JLA who was dating Black Canary (though, even as a six year old, I certainly got a vaguely creepy, lecherous vibe from Ollie). Not a very endearing role (at least when you're six), but not terribly offensive. Still, now that I am a liberal argumentative hothead, I have greater respect for the guy.

When I started reading DC stuff again, I wasn't overly depressed that he had been killed off. Major DC shakeups filtered my way from the handful of friends I had who still followed comics - I knew they'd killed off, then revived Superman, but that was really about it. The shock of learning that Ollie had been killed and replaced by his son didn't seem nearly as jarring as learning that Hal Jordan had turned evil, then transformed into the Spectre.

Then I read that issue of JLA in which Connor has to defend the Watchtower using his father's selection of trick arrows. That "Dad, you'll be the death of me" line, coupled with the rather dull concept of a new Green Arrow who does nothing but shoot boring old wooden arrows, really made me appreciate what had been lost - not just with killing off Ollie, but the whole Grellification of the character into a more realistic mode. A guy who just shoots arrows is both boring and credulity-straining if he manages to go more than a couple issues without killing people. A guy who can bust out handcuff arrows, screaming arrows, boxing glove arrows, etc. is a much more fun character to read about, as it effectively lets the writers come up with whatever crazy device they need to move the story along at any given moment.

(I should probably point out here that, due to my stretch of non-comic reading, I read almost nothing the way it was supposed to be read. I read the Morrison JLA stuff in 2002, about 2 years after Ollie came back from the dead.)

Last week, I decided it was time to read the Kevin Smith run, in which Ollie comes back from the dead. I got a little enthusiastic, and just kept going through the Meltzer run, into Winick and all the way up to the One Year Later issue that came out last week or so. The Smith run was really much better than I expected. Seeing the reunion between Dinah and Ollie was very sweet, and just about anything that is filled with longing for the way things were when I was reading comics as a kid is going to make me happy. The Meltzer arc was all right, though I still bear him a little ill-will about the whole anal rape thing.

Everything since has been all right. I really appreciate the degree to which they're building up a whole Green Arrow family. I understand they can't really use Dinah full-time (though, this is all based on hearsay, since I haven't quite gotten around to reading Birds of Prey yet), but it would be nice to give Ollie a female partner again. Still, the introduction of Black Lightning as a semi-recurring character is nice, though might make more sense from a narrative perspective to give him someone to argue against instead of someone who pretty much agrees with him down the line. Or, really just push the whole left-wing activist thing to a whole other level and bring in Brother Power to hang out with Ollie.

Really, my only gripe on the series is the decision to pit Green Arrow against giant hulking monsters as often as possible. We've had two fights with Solomon Grundy, a whole bunch of demons, and the African laborers who were turned into monsters. It gets a little repetitive (particularly if you read 20-30 issues a day), and sort of keeps the focus away from the more realistic villains you expect (slumlords, drug dealers, evil corporations). Yeah, I know at least some of those monsters are created by evil corporations, and it's really all allegorical, and, ever since Buffy, using monsters/demons to represent _____ is perfectly OK, but it gets old. Green Arrow doesn't really need a level of fantasy to make his stories enjoyable.

I realize now that this goes against what I was saying earlier about appreciating the overall wackiness of the trick arrow concept, which sort of goes against my push towards more realistic storylines for the character. Let me back up a bit. Green Arrow is basically a Batman knockoff - rich guy, wacky gadgets - but completely lacking the tragic, operatic elements of Batman's origin. Ollie decides to fight crime either A) for fun (in the Golden Age incarnation) or B) to right social injustice (in the Bronze Age incarnation). It's an interesting twist, since most superheroes are de facto upholders of the status quo (which they sort of have to be, or we end up in the Gaiman half of Miracleman). Having a hero who is sort of inherently opposed to the status quo really should be leading to more interesting stories that Green Arrow's been getting on this run. I would be perfectly happy if his storylines were less like Buffy, and more like Bendis' run on Daredevil (though it would be nice if a story arc could be completed in less than a year).

So, I'm pretty pleased with the One Year Later jump. Ollie as mayor kind of works for me, though I'm kind of curious to see how it ends up playing out. What isn't working for me is the decision to treat the destroyed neighborhoods more like a lawless, walled off city (which we've seen before, fairly recently) and more like a New Orleans allegory for governmental failure to protect and help its citizenry. Maybe they're planning to use Bludhaven in that regard, but, really, is there a better argument for the necessity of a liberal, Green Arrow-endorsed style of government than the response to Katrina?